Less than 24 hours after Twitter locked Julian Assange and Wikileaks staff members out of their online accounts, perhaps in anticipation of this very event, Wikileaks announced the release their latest leak. Officially entitled “US Embassy Shopping List,” the leak contains access to a searchable database of over 16,000 procurement requests posted/received by United States embassies around the world. While the majority of documents are rather mundane in nature, some of them shed light on some very interesting material/topics, including the US’s sponsorship of mass surveillance programs and operations – documenting the distribution of spy equipment to various countries around the world.

Not only do the documents shed light into what the US Government does with at least some of its seemingly endless foreign aid, it also shows the true extent to which so many countries and Governments around the world are utterly dependent on US assistance – having to suckle at the US Government’s tit for even the most basic of jobs/tasks. About the leak, as was explained by Wikileaks in a press release dated December 21st 2018:

“All US embassies post requests for quotations and job listings on their websites when they need to purchase goods or services. In some cases, these requests may hint at covert activities performed by US agencies in the country. For example, in an August 2018 procurement request for “Tactical Spy Equipment,” the US embassy in El Salvador asked vendors to provide 94 spy cameras, most disguised as everyday objects such as ties, caps, shirt buttons, watches, USB drives, lighters, and pens. Similarspy cameras were also requestedby the US embassy in Colombia.

The majority of the procurement requests focus on mundane activities required for the day-to-day operation of embassies and consulates, such asconstruction projects, laundry service, andgutter cleaning. In one case, the US consulate in Guayaquil, Ecuador lost track of the number of fish in its fishpond and needed someone tocount the fish and clean the pond. Interspersed among these banal requests are documents that provide insight into the priorities and agenda of the US Government abroad. For example, to promote trade interests in China, the US consulate in Shanghairequested the productionof “three marketing and promotional videos that highlight U.S. beef quality”.

Even the banal requests may be worth scrutiny because numerous secret programmes are operated out of US embassies. WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 publications showed that the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligenceruns a covert hacking base out of the US consulate in Frankfurtand the documents disclosed by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA and CIA jointly operate a covert signals intelligence programme called the Special Collection Service, which uses US embassies around the world as bases for interception of communications and clandestine operations. These procurement documents do not appear to include details related directly to these programmes, but they do include information about theactual activitiesof the divisions used as cover for CIA programmes, note which jobs require security clearance, and provide clues about the existence of infrastructure that may be potentially useful to US intelligence services operating abroad, such as thedata center at the Frankfurt consulate.

While these procurement requests are public information, they are only temporarily linked to from US embassy websites while the request is open. But even after the links to the requests are removed, the files remain online. This is because all US embassies use WordPress and the procurement documents are stored in their WordPress uploads folder. So although older procurement documents may not be obviously available, the WordPress uploads can be searched via both the search function on the embassy’s website and third-party search engines.The US Embassy Shopping List preserves these requests and makes them more accessible by collecting the documents uploaded to US embassy websites, filtering for the procurement-related files, and presenting them in a searchable database.“